Here is one:
We have nothing to gain by continuing to wage war in Afghanistan. We are keeping that poor country in turmoil, killing innocent people and spending money that could be used to create jobs. We have had no success in nine years, and we can expect no success in nine more. We are wasting soldiers’ lives. We should bring our troops home now.
Joel Welty
Blanchard, Mich.
Like the poor, the clueless will always be among us.
Amen to the letter. Unfortunately you are a Cassandra, Joe.
The empire is falling Joe. But it will squeeze you for your last cent before it dies. (Or as Samuel put it, the king will take the best of your land, send your sons off to war, and turn your daughters into his servants. And when they cry to the Lord in that day, he will not listen.)
The world would a better place if only the Taliban were back in control.
And we don’t really care what they will do the the women in Afghanistan.
You don’t care about Afghan women, or you would consider how many more civilians American soldiers have murdered. You pull at the log in your enemy’s eye (an evil enemy, all acknowledge) and ignore the one in your own. The Taliban are evil, but so are the American soliders who murder with impunity, and then have the evidence hidden by the government until organisations such as Wikileaks illegally reveal it. But this is all for the sake of Democracy! The ends do justify the means! (As it did in the 1940’s war with Japan where 200,000 civilians in two cities were fried alive so that “less soldiers would die.”) Until America repents of its abominations, it holds no place of moral highground in my opinion.
But then you probably see no wrong in the 200,000 civilians your country murdered when it nuked Japanese cities in the
Justin, I don’t know who you are, and I truly don’t care, but you might want to read some history books. And whatever country you are in, you are able to put your hateful statements on the internet because of the sacrifice of American soldiers and Marines, and the wealth of our nation which protected you from Soviet domination from 1946 to 1994. I have been both an American soldier and an American Marine and I truly resent your comments. You may hate America–that is your privilege–but you don’t know anything about the American military. You are buying into Jihadist propoganda.
Characterizing American soldiers as murderers is at best ignorant, and at worst dishonest and malicious. Is that really worthy of Christian discourse?
Justin, my father was on the Bunker Hill when it was hit by two Kamikaziis. 395 died on that ship. My father was fished out of the Pacific. He felt no guilt over the use of the atomic bombs to end that war and I don’t either.
The Japanese started that war. They waged a brutal and cruel war in China and later through the Pacific. I too am prior service, US Army and we are not taught to murder. Your comment is at best ignorant and at worst a deliberate lie.
No one has tamed Afghanistan. No one. The Soviet Union tried, and failed. The British tried, and failed. Our coalition hasn’t made much headway. It is a rugged, radical landscape and people. We thought the Taliban was quashed — they came back. The Afghan government is crafty and duplicitous. I’m just wondering how long we’re going to stay there and put American lives on the line for minimal benefit.
It may well be past time for the west to leave Afghanistan. But that won’t end the war, just western involvement. NPR ran a show dedicated to the fear of Afghanistan women about what would happen to them if the Taliban returned (with the usual liberal accolades of approval). Of course the only way we could do that would be to have a military presence which they were also against. I am just sick and tired of the liberals talking out of both sides of their mouths saying the we should not be involved, but we need to do more to protect human rights. Just like 5, the US is never right and the only thing we could ever do to please them is to commit national suicide.
Br. Michael said,
“And we don’t really care what they will do the the women in Afghanistan. ”
And, we really didn’t care what the militant communists were doing to the villagers in South Vietnam who wouldn’t cooperate with the their revolution.
And isn’t it odd, that the communists used anti-colonialist propaganda against the USA both in South Vietnam and within the USA and throughout the world when it was the communists themselves who were the colonialists.
After all, the few old communists who actually controlled North Vietnam and who had set up an insidious system of coercion in South Vietnam were nothing but a bunch of ruthless ideologists who had imported a European radical socialist ideology, Communism, and were using it to force traditional and nationalist Vietnamese to “give up their old ways.” Many of these old Vietnamese communists were expatriates to the extent that they were no longer really culturally Vietnamese, but rather “returned Vietnamese” who were avid avocates of radical and non-democratic socialism.
It can be said that there would have been no need for a war in South Vietnam if only the Vietnamese communists had been patient and followed a solely political and insidious plan of communist subversion and takeover, but they were impatient and so millions of lives were lost and millions of lives were ruined by the Vietnam War.
Likewise, in places like Afghanistan, a core group of Islamist revolutionaries seem intent on imposing radical Muslim rule ‘right now,’ regardless of the costs in lives. And its not just Afghanistan, these radical Muslim revolutuionaries want to establish a radical Muslim ‘caliphate’ over the whole world. Read about it, its in a book that they use as an instruction manual.
So it not just about Afghanistan, its about the amount of damage that a violent and insidious group of radical revolutionaries can do if they are left alone and permitted to do that damage.